Iraq: Ayatollah Sistani hints that Parliament should dump al-Maliki as Muqtada mobilizes “Peace Brigades”
The chorus for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of Iraq to step down grew louder on Friday,…
The chorus for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of Iraq to step down grew louder on Friday,…
By Juan Cole President Barack Obama announced on Thursday that he will send 300 Green Beret…
By Juan Cole A consensus is forming in Washington that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki must resign,…
By Jon Queally The interim prime minister of Fiji on Thursday condemned the international community for its continued failure to address the crisis of climate change, saying Pacific island nations like his…
By Alex Kirby Researchers warn that marine life could be dramatically affected as climate change threatens to cause severe reduction of plankton – the key source of nutrients − in some ocean…
via Bernie Sanders US Senator Dick Cheney “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use…
By Tom Engelhardt via Tomdispatch As Iraq was unraveling last week and the possible outlines of the first jihadist state in modern history were coming into view, I remembered this nugget from…
Fox News on Wednesday continued its multi-year obsession with the terrorist attack in Benghazi by inviting NFL football analyst and former quarterback Terry Bradshaw to weigh in. Out Numbered host Andrea Tantaros began the segment by highlighting a…
By Rebecca Gordon June is Torture Awareness Month, so this seems like a good time to consider some difficult aspects of torture people in the United States might need to be aware…
By Ariel Dorfman via Tomdispatch.com According to an Amnesty International Poll released in May, 45% of Americans believe that torture is “sometimes necessary and acceptable” in order to “gain information that may protect…
Ask any Republican about the link between the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and job growth in America and they’ll tell you that Obamacare is ruining our economy and robbing good people of jobs. Of course, that just isn’t true. According to Forbes…
The Associated Press has been doing a bang-up job of covering fracking issues lately, and over the weekend they released a bombshell fracking report that set fire to the tubes. The new fracking report focuses on oil and gas fracking wells that are classified…
Why haven’t any big bankers been prosecuted for their role in the housing crisis that led to the Great Recession? These finance executives took part in “scandals that violate the most basic ethical norms,” as the head of the IMF Christine Lagarde…
By Peter Van Buren What We’ve Lost Since 9/11 Taking Down the First Amendment in Post-Constitutional America By Peter Van Buren America has entered its third great era: the post-constitutional one. In…
By Lauren McCauley A map of the Arctic from the National Geographic Atlas of the World. (Screenshot via National Geographic)Cartographers working on the latest edition of the National Geographic Atlas of the…
Obama renews climate change push (via AFP) President Barack Obama renewed his campaign to curb carbon emissions Saturday, saying the debate over climate change is over. Obama, who made the battle against…
Posted on 12 June 2014 by John Abraham One benefit of working in the climate science arena is that I have the privilege to interact with some of the world’s most talented individuals. I have learned their stories while we have shared hypotheses about…
In a blog post entitled “All Our Patents Are Belong To You”, Elon Musk has once again done something revolutionary; opened Tesla’s patents for use by any other automaker. This guy is the real deal. When’s the last time a billionaire CEO quoted…
No incumbent majority leader had lost a seat in Congress since 1899, when the post was first created. Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) broke that streak last night. He’s announced that he’ll step down from leadership within weeks. Cantor’s stunning defeat…
By Chris Edwards, University of East Anglia The economic and political focus is increasingly on the inequality of income and wealth as they both rise in Europe and the US. At a…
Award-winning proposed Aktivhaus apartment tower at Skyline Plaza complex in Frankfurt (skyscrapercity.com) The European residential high-rise boom has a green twist these days. Magnus Kaminiarz & Cie unanimously won this spring’s design award for…
Book review and discussion questions for reading groups In No Place to Hide, Glenn Greenwald shows that a modern investigative reporter doesn’t just need the courage to take on the United States government and established media. He also needs a whole…
Vegas cop killers ‘had pro-gun militia links’ (via AFP) A gun-toting couple possibly linked to anti-government militias killed two US cops execution-style and left a swastika on the bodies, in America’s latest…
Foreign Policy
Inside Mosul: ISIS fears Popular Uprising; Baathists cry Foul
By a Special Correspondent via Niqash.org NIQASH’s correspondent takes a walk around Mosul to see how the city has changed since extremists took it over last week. Despite masked men at checkpoints…
Afghanistan Elections: Abdullah refuses to Concede, Protests Erupt charging Fraud
By Frud Bezhan via RFE/RL KABUL — As allegations of fraud in Afghanistan’s runoff election pile up, protest movements have mobilized against what they see as systematic vote-rigging. Two groups have taken…
Palestinians 66 Yrs Later: An Unsustainable Refugee Crisis
By Pierre Krähenbühl via EurActiv Commissioner General of the United United Nations Relief and Works Agency Pierre Krähenbühl writes on the unsustainability of the Palestine refugee crisis on World Refugee Day (20…
Iraq: Ayatollah Sistani hints that Parliament should dump al-Maliki as Muqtada mobilizes “Peace Brigades”
The chorus for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of Iraq to step down grew louder on Friday, as Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani of Najaf had his representative in Karbala read a Friday prayers…
Is Iraq Actually Falling Apart? What Social Science Surveys Show
By Mansoor Moaddel Several nationally representative surveys carried out in Iraq between 2004 and 2013 provide important facts about Iraqi orientations toward secular politics, basis of identity, Americans, and Iranians. These facts…
Pakistan Needs Regional and Global Alliances to Fight the Extremists
By Muqtedar Khan Pakistan on Sunday launched another military operation — Zarb-e-Azb — against the extremists in Waziristan. The name of the operation means sharp and cutting or surgical. This is not…
Obama Prepares for Drone War in Iraq
By Juan Cole President Barack Obama announced on Thursday that he will send 300 Green Beret Army special operations soldiers to Iraq. They will be detailed to Iraqi National Army Headquarters and…
Israeli Occupation Army harasses Palestinians on Pretext of Missing Settler Youth
Palestinian families bear brunt as Israel hunts teens (via AFP) It was the sound of the front door being kicked in that woke the Izrayqat family early Wednesday as Israeli troops barged…
Iraq is more like N. Ireland than Lebanon, Reconciliation is Possible
By Jocelyne Cesari The attack of The Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham (ISIS) on Mossul and its march on Baghdad has taken the international community by surprise and raised the…
As US Pressures Maliki to Resign, will Iraqi Gov’t Collapse?
By Juan Cole A consensus is forming in Washington that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki must resign, as part of accountability for his failures with his Sunni Arab citizens. Because Washington is so…
Cons of Going to War against Iraq (Cole, Jan. 2003)
By Juan Cole From a talk I gave at the University of Michigan in late 2002, publised at the beginning of 2003. It is often alleged by hawks that no one saw…
Dear GOP: Captured Benghazi Suspect Says He Was Inspired By Video
Abu Khatalla, the captured suspected ringleader of the September 11, 2012 Benghazi attack, says it was the much-discussed video that inspired him to act. What he did in the period just before the attack has remained unclear. But Mr. Abu Khattala told…
Neocons promised Iraq would be Model of Democracy, Left US Holding the Bag
By Adam Quinn, University of Birmingham Dorothy Parker famously reacted to the ringing of the telephone with the phrase, “What fresh Hell is this?” Occupants of the White House could be forgiven…
Who are Iraq’s Sunni Arabs and What did we Do to them?
By Juan Cole The two great branches of Islam coexist in Iraq across linguistic and ethnic groups. There are Sunni Arabs and Shiite Arabs, Sunni Kurds and (a tiny minority of) Shiite…
Mass Sunni Uprising in Iraq: Sectarian Blowback of 2003 U.S. Invasion (Cole on Democracy Now!)
I appeared on Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now! to discuss the situation in Iraq Transcript: AARON MATÉ: President Obama has announced plans to deploy about 275 U.S. military forces back to Iraq. In…
Absolutely Nothing: A Veteran’s Savage Indictment of the Iraq War
Tragically, all we’ve fought for in Iraq, all that 4,500 American lives were shed to gain, is on the cusp, potentially, of vanishing. – Mitt Romney, “Ideas Summit,” 6/13/2014 All we fought for in Iraq. All we fought for in Iraq is on the cusp…
Opportunities Abound in Iraq to Reset US Middle East Policy
By Kirk J. Beattie The crisis induced by ISIL’s advances in Iraq presents tremendous opportunities for the United States, and the U.S. government should move quickly to take full advantage. ISIL represent…
Don’t Trust the Bombers on Iraq: “Shock and Awe” Never Works
By Juan Cole In March of 2003, we were treated to an intensive bombardment of Iraq, which the Bush White House propagandists termed “Shock and Awe.” As usual, the US Air Force…
Why some Iraqis would rather try their luck under Sunni Extremists
ERBIL, Iraq — Five days after fleeing Mosul in northern Iraq, Ahmed says he’s now more nervous than ever. But it’s not the Al Qaeda-inspired extremists who took over his hometown that have him worried. No, he’s scared of what his own military might…
Wikileaks’ Manning says US public was lied to about Iraq from the start
Manning says US public lied to about Iraq from the start (via AFP) The detained US soldier convicted of leaking a trove of secret documents to WikiLeaks made a rare foray into…